Worried Cat

We have a second story, covered back deck. It runs the full length of the house and over looks the garden and two pastures. There is no access from the deck down to the yard, so raccoons or neighbor dogs can't come up and bother us. We love, love, love the back deck and find any reason to go out there. In the sun, we have to enjoy the view. In the rain, we have to listen to the sound of drops hitting the roof. In the dark, we need to look at the stars. Any excuse at all.

When it is raining, the cats, being completely spoiled little princesses, generally won't go outside. They pretend like they want to go out and then sit at the open door staring into the rain before turning tail and heading back to the fireplace for another nap. So to fulfill their out-doors desires when the weather is less than favorable they like to go out on the back deck. They can sit on the deck railing and watch the outside but not actually have to step foot in the mud.

Today they had been in all day and it was raining hard when we got home from work. So both ran to the back door and asked to be let out. I obliged. Then I forgot I let them out and went about my business. After about an hour or so I realized they may want back in.

I opened the back door and called "kitties, want to come in." Rosa came running meowing the whole way. This is not normal behavior. Neither of our cats is very vocal. The only time they use their voices is when it's past dinner time - then they literally yell at me. When Rosa came running across the deck she was making this worried mew, mew, mew sound. I said "What is it?" Then looking around, "Where is Alley?" At that Rosa turned around and went running back down the deck still worried and mew, mew, mewing. I called "Alley, where you at?" She didn't come running. I bet she fell off the railing. The railing gets damp when it rains hard and neither of the cats is very graceful.

So I went back inside, Rosa walking at my heals continuing to mew, mew, mew. I went to the front door and opened it. I didn't even get a chance to call for Alley when she came in soaking wet. Rosa ran right up to her, mewed another time, sniffed her butt and decided that Alley was OK.

For their troubles they felt they needed a treat. I offered up a few tuna flavored yummies. Spoiled.

Alley the Huntress

I have a split personality when it comes to rabbits. (Dr. Jeckle) On one side, I think bunnies are cute and cuddly and I don't want them to be hurt. (Mr. Hyde) On the other side, if a rabbit is in the garden and nibbling on my veggies then there's trouble. Jeremy has chucked a full soda off the back deck at a rabbit. He missed, but I was honestly hoping he would hit it. I would shoot a repeat offender if the animal was munching a lot of hard worked for food.

Sunday afternoon we were just finishing up weeding the garden, thinning the beet starts, harvesting strawberries and constructing an arbor over the blueberries, when we heard an odd screaming sound coming from the creek bed. Alley emerged with a baby bunny in her mouth. The poor bunny was terrified. Alley was so proud. She strutted into the middle of the garden to gain our compliments, then release the bunny. (I did congratulate her.) The bunny shot back down into the creek bed and cover of shrubs. Alley followed and came out a few seconds later with the bunny. This time she brought the bunny up to me and drop it about 4 feet away. It charged me. I squealed like a 3 years girl, jumped/failed to avoid stepping on the bunny or Alley. Alley grabbed it again. This time she headed up stairs, presumably to go Jordan, who was out front, her conquest. I got there first.

I warned Jordan that Alley had caught a little bunny. Jordan said "Really?!" and took off to find them. I went inside to start prepping dinner, figuring at least it's one last bunny to assault my garden. About 5 minutes later Jordan opened the front door and said "Mom, get a box - I've got the bunny." Sure enough, Jordan was holding the bunny, which was still alive, not even bleeding. I have no idea how she got it away from Alley. Jordan put it in the box and took the bunny up "far away" (to our neighbor's house) to let it go. Of course, she had to stop to show Ryan her catch.

Computer and Crappy Weather

My laptop has become like a cat. I sit down on the couch and it's on my lap. No matter what I'm planning on doing while on the couch - watching TV, reading a magazine, knitting - the laptop is always there to keep me company. And the actual cats hate that the laptop gets priority. Sometimes Rosa tries to take over and run the show - as you can see from the picture.

Last week, my laptop started blinking on and off and the battery wouldn't charge up. Finally on Wednesday it wouldn't turn on. I was really worried and rushed it to the computer doctor. Thankfully it was just a loose plug in thinging and could easily be fixed, but I would have to be without my laptop for four whole days. Four days!

Not blogging was hard. I kept thinking, "I should by writing something." But there was no laptop to write on. And putting a real pen to a sheet of paper, seemed so old-school. Then again, there is nothing going on here anyway. Surprise, surprise - it's raining and cold. The seeds are in the ground but I'm nervous they'll just mold and rot without sprouting. The starts we put in are already getting munched by the slugs. The only plant looking good are the strawberries. As long as we get the nets over the fruit before the birds get them, we should have a bumper crop.

There is nothing much going on with the animals either. The sheep are pregnant but weeks from giving birth. They are just eating and getting wider. The chickens are laying. The pigs are growing. I think each is about 20 pounds heavier than the day we bought them. The bees are buzzing. Just same ol', same ol' with the animals.

And, as you can tell, I have my laptop back on my lap where it belongs. My lap is very happy. The cats have mixed emotions.

Snow Day

We get very little snow during the winter and in the past 70 years it has only snowed this late in February 4 times. So when it does snow, it's a big deal. Here are pictures from today's snow storm.

Lilly, in her thick winter coat, was completely unphased by the snow. She followed the mantra "Keep calm and carry on."

The chickens on the other hand, were not happy at all about the cold, white stuff. This one thought about venturing out, but decided against it and went back in.

The cats were just interested in it and kept sniffing, pawing and pouncing around the yard.

Cat and Mouse

I don't put cats in the farm-animal-column, but no farm is complete with out a couple of cats to chase the mice. And lord knows we have mice.

The mice congregate in two primary locations: the garage and the barn. The garage has bird food, dried corn-on-the-cob for squirrels and stored fruits and veggies. I know the garage is not the best place to store apples, pumpkins and acorn squash. Our intention is to finish the area under our sun-rooms and turn it into a "root cellar". By finish I mean concrete the floors, insulate the walls and add a door. But for now the garage is the "root cellar." Last year I didn't get the apples well stored from the mice. I went in one day to pick out a couple lovely apples for lunch and found little teeth marks in nearly every one. This fall the apples are in boxes and sitting on pallets. We'll see how that works.

The other gathering place for the mice is the barn. There are lots of great nesting spots - hay, straw, piles of bailing twine, folded up bird netting. And direct access to oats, scratch (corn/barley) and chicken feed. It's like mouse-heaven.

Our two cats are pretty wonderful animals but also wimpy about the weather. During the summer they are always outside. They catch a mouse or mole (yay!) every other day. After playing with their prey for a bit, the cats leave the dead rodent along our walking path from the house to the barn so we are sure to see it. The cats also sit by their conquest and wait for some praise, which we always give. But now the weather is cold and wet. Today, when we got up both cats ran down to the front door. I opened the door and they stood looking out for a few seconds, thought better of it and turned back inside. About 5 minutes later they were curled up by the pellet stove.

Not only do the cats dislike the fall and winter weather, they also want to be warm at night. When we go to bed we turn off the pellet stove, which means the house gets cold. So the cats come into our room and sleep on the bed. I wake up to one cat stretched from my armpit to knee and the other balled up between me and Jeremy. There is no way I can roll over without disturbing their slumber, which I just can't bring myself to do. So I lay, uncomfortably trying to sleep until morning. They better earn they keep in the spring!

Picture taken by my friend and farm-sitter Desiree.

Rosa

We have two cats - Rosa and Alley. They are littermates and when together behave exactly like sisters. The equally love on and fight with each other. But other than that they have nothing in common.

Alley is a skinny, wiry, expressive and will only accept human attention on her terms but when she wants love you had better give it up or risk her climbing your leg. Inside Alley loves to play with the 'cat toys'. We spend lots of time watching her throw and catch the toy mouse. But when she is outside she is only somewhat interested in hunting real mice.

Rosa is fat, lazy, cuddly and always wants human attention - any human whether she knows you or not. Rosa is also the most uncoordinated animal I've ever seen. One evening, while I was washing my face in the bathroom, she decided to jump up on the counter to better receive petting from me. She jump and missed, hitting the edge of the counter just below her front legs. She landed and looked sincerely embarrassed. She skulked off shame at her lack of cat skills. She pulls this kind failed jump all the time when she is inside or on the back deck.

Contrary to everything I just said about Rosa, she is the hunter outside. She stalks and catches moles, voles and mice. She tries to catch birds, but her lack of coordination keeps them safe for the most part. Here is what happened when Rosa decided to sneak up on the birds in their nest ...

Robins like to build nests in the rafters of the pole barn. This year there are no active nests, only left overs from last year. But Rosa doesn't know that. So she climbed a post and walked the rafters, hunting. Discouraged at the lack of babies, she couldn't figure out how to get down. She decided, unwisely to jump onto the chicken coop roof. After that she looked a lot like a cat trying to ice skate on a steep incline. The following pictures do a better job then my explanation of the fail. I only wish I had video.

Mouse in the Night

When it's warm out, but not hot enough to run the airconditioner, we keep our window in our bedroom open at bit during the night. Our window's screen is detached at the bottom corner and the cats have figured that out, so they can come and go as they please.

I was woken up at 1am to one of the cats 'playing' with a mouse she had brought in. She had dropped it and it had gone behind the dresserdrawer. The cat would wait at one side. When the mouse came along the wall, she would swat it and then run, claws tearing the carpet, to the other side where she would wait. It was the claws-on-carpet that woke me up.

I grabbed a shoebox. Tugged, scotted, pushed, heaved the dresserdrawer out a bit from the wall (solid wood, stuffed with clothes, is very heavy to move, esspecially in the middle of the night.) The cat was still swatting at the mouse, so I had to "tear from one side to the other" with the cat a few times before catching the terrified mouse. I took it out back and let it go on the deck. (Jeremy slept through all this.)

I climbed back into bed. The cat went back out the window. After about 15 minutes, I was just drifting back to sleep, when the cat jumped back in the window. Guess what?! She took the mouse right back over to the dresserdrawer, which I had shoved back into place, and released it for another rousing game of "swat the mouse" aka "tear up the carpet".

Back out of bed. Got the shoebox again. Pulled the dresserdrawer back out from the wall - again. Chased the little mouse and caught it - again. This time I flung it off the backdeck (our deck is on the second story, so the mouse went sooring.) Poor little mouse probably didn't survive the fall, though he may have welcomed an end to the torture. I was confident that even if the mouse did survive the fall, the cat would spend the rest of the night trying to locate him. Back to bed. (Jeremy was still asleep - hadn't even shifted positions.)

Next morning, I said, synical that Jeremy was really sleeping through all this, "thanks for helping with the mouse." He said "what mouse." He really had slept through it and had no idea what happened. But he did find it rather hilarious though.

Stats

We are coming into our fifth summer on the farm. We moved in May 2005. That first year we didn't do any farming. It was too late to start a garden, plus we weren't sure where it would go. The pastures were in awful shape - years of too many animals, multiple horses, on just 3 pastures. Fencing all over the place, with little purpose. So we spent the first summer getting organized and helping the pastures come back from near death.

We acquired our first farm animals in summer 2006 - twin rams. We got two sheep - a pregnant ewe and her yearling - in spring 2007. We have had a total of 16 sheep on the farm since then. 9 born here and the others were purchased. Three of the sheep died - two within just a few days of birth and one very sick ewe who died after two months of meds and veternarian house calls. We've butchered 5 of the sheep. So as of today, March 16th, we have 8 sheep - Notag, Lily, Patches, Daphy, Blacky, Buttercup, Norman Jr and Junior. We are hoping all the ewes are pregnant and we'll have a whole new batch of lambs this spring.

The one and only cow we had, we acquired from Grandpa Ed in the summer of 2006. Gladys was only with us for a year.

We added chickens to the farm in March 2009. We built a coop and purchased 7 chicks - 4 buff orpingtons and 3 light brahma's. One of the chickens turned out to be a roaster and was therefore made into fajitas. The other 6 are doing great and laying many more eggs than we can consume - we have 3 dozen in the fridge right now.

In May 2009 we purchased two pigs. The farm we got them from will take a while to describe, we'll save that for another day - let's just say it seemed more like a rescue than buying pigs to raise and eat. Pigs grow fast, very fast, and they were at 'market weight' in 6 months. We plan on purchasing two more pigs this spring.

You probably figured out that we have butchered a lot of meat - 1 cow (400 lbs), 5 sheep (? lbs), 2 pigs (combined ~500 lbs) and 1 chicken (maybe 3 lbs). That is a whole lot of meat for a family of three. We have two large freezers which are currently full of pasture-raised and humanly butcherd meat. Not to mention that Jeremy hunts - we have elk and deer in the freezers too. If the world as-we-know-it comes to an end, we're good (as long as the generator keeps running).